FALLING IN REVERSE (SEDUCE AND DESTROY SERIES Book 1), page 24
“Or something.” He chuckles, placing his other arm on the other side of my head, caging me against the wall. “Still mad?”
“At what?”
“Us stealing your boyfriend.” My eyes cramp together into slits. “I’m going to take that as a yes.”
“You can fuck off now.”
“McQueen, baby…I told you to stay away from these men. Unless…” He drops his index finger down my frame and back up. “You out here tryin’ to kill ’em with that dress?”
It’s nothing special, something I borrowed from Nessa a few months back and never returned. Though, it does show off every inch of my body.
“Always been the plan, Reevie.” He smirks at my nickname for him, liking it more than I ever thought he would because it’s just a name. “Why are you here?”
“Visiting a friend.” He leans closer, that intoxicating smell of him causing my body to melt into the drywall. “And you didn’t answer my other question.”
“I’m always mad.”
“Don’t look too pissed now. However, I’m hoping it’s because I’m around and you’re gettin’ to like that.”
“Mhm.”
His smile widens. “So, since plan A didn’t work and those men are still breathing in that dining room, what’s plan B?”
“Going to the bathroom. Did Torin call you to come rescue him or something?”
“Noooo, I just happened to run into you myself. Lucky night, I guess.”
I turn my head and Reeve catches my chin, his thumb running once down my jawline. His touch sparks excitement and a whole lot of rebellion in my blood. It wants me to say fuck Torin, his brother, and let me take Reeve for a ride.
Stupid idea.
Still sounds like a whole lotta fun, though.
“You know you walked into the lion’s den, right?” My eyes meet his again and he’s serious.
Honestly, I wouldn’t doubt if he was. Minus all the bullshit between me and his friends, he seems like the mellowest guy of the bunch and the one to give it to me straight.
I roll my eyes against his warning, no matter how true it is. I don’t belong here. “I was invited.”
“I know. So what, pray tell, does that motherfucker have on you to step into a place that you have a very good possibility of not walkin’ out of?”
“Nothing that I can’t handle.”
That’s obviously a lie.
“You don’t trust me.”
My brows ascend to the ceiling. “Now you’re getting it.”
The new pain in the ass bends his arms so that he can get closer and rest his elbows along the drywall. “Did you hit your head or something, or are you suddenly suicidal? ’Cause if you are, baby McQueen, let me know and I’ll pep you up real quick.”
“What does that include, exactly?”
“Not a butcher knife sticking out of your gut while I fuck you,” he quips lightly. “That’s how Ramsey likes it. Torin would bend you over and slam his small dick into you and be selfish out it. I was thinking more”—his fingers trail down to my collarbone and slide down the side of my ribs—“your legs wrapped tightly around my head.”
My stomach somersaults at the thought of gripping his pretty face between my thighs while he licks and nips my—stop.
I place my hand on his hard chest to keep him where he is. “I don’t think your boss would like you fraternizing with the enemy.”
“My boss being…”
“Torin.”
Reeve chortles again, a deep amusement lacing in each exhale of the rhythm. “Torin is definitely not my fuckin’ boss. Have you walked around thinking I was his associate or servant this whole time?”
“I—” Reeve’s chest presses hard into mine, sandwiching me and my exhale to not happen.
I can’t say I don’t like the feel of him. I’m also unable to lie to myself and convince my head that he’s not attractive and kinda sweet in his own cocky, self-assured way.
Still not an option.
And I don’t want him within the crossfires of what I already have going on with Torin and Cairo. Two dudes I’ve equally pissed off.
“You’ve heard that Torin runs the Forsaken Crew,” he mutters over me before his hand finds my hip and he squeezes. “But he doesn’t. Or I should say, he doesn’t do it alone. Cairo’s daddy created the crew and all of us street urchins just flocked to it. We run the Forsaken Crew as a unit. I’m just as powerful and as much of an asshole as he is, but I tend to direct it to people who show me they deserve it. So…from here, it looks like the South Shore girl wants The Landings.”
“I never said I wanted anything.”
“But you’re here.”
Because Emilio sent me a threatening picture of my little sister, you fuck.
“You’re playing a dangerous game of chess if you think you’re going to fuck both crews, McQueen. Those consequences are gonna hurt.” He bends closer, smelling of the ocean, so smooth and therapeutic, that it’s definitely welcomed. His cheek brushes mine, sending a cool chill down my body and to my toes when he whispers, “You shot Torin…what do you think is going to happen when you keep putting yourself in the wrong spot?”
“And Emilio strapped a bomb to my man’s ankle.”
“Still sticking with that story, huh?” Reeve pulls his face from mine. “You don’t look into him.”
“What?”
“Emilio. I know you’re not gonna fuck him physically, but I’m willing to bet you’d fuck him over.”
I would.
If I had the power to.
Reeve cranes his head to look down on me. “Why don’t you fuck me over? You on top, me on the bottom, my mouth lavishing every inch of your body.”
This guy…and his beach boy vibes and how smoothly he just speaks about fucking like it’s the weather.
I’m not immune to it, haven’t had the time nor the practice, but I can’t say I’m too pissed that it’s him trapping me in this hallway just to get a few minutes of my time over the alternative in the dining room.
“No, you’re definitely not what you seem,” he replies. “I have a feeling you’re gonna be in a lot of trouble.”
“Can’t convict me until you have hard evidence. Isn’t that how our justice system works and all?”
“Not in this one. We were screwed to ever become friends before it even started.”
“Who said anything about being your friend?”
“My bad.” He bows his head down, but I know he’s not embarrassed.
No, Reeve has swagger for years to use up.
“I meant I want a text message from you at night saying hello, fuck off, come over, I wanna sit on your face. I’m not picky…I’ll take anything, really.”
“I don’t text boys from the other side of the ugly black line that divides us,” I calm.
“I’m not a boy,” he vouches, deep and husky. His lips hovering over the corner of mine. “And I personally don’t have anything against South Shore, baby. Don’t let a war that had nothing to do with us fuck that up.”
He left one thing out.
The Landings has something against South Shore and he’s part of the crew that terrorizes it. That it’s not going to stop because I decided to hang out with him, nor is it going to be a romance that ties two towns together.
His palm then rounds my hip, falling away and that’s when I feel him fidgeting in my purse.
“If you’re stealing from me,” I ground out into his ear, “you suck at it.”
He surprises me when he drops his face even lower and places a soft kiss to the column of my neck.
My skin instantaneously burns from the contact causing a tingling sensation to form in my stomach and float its way up my chest.
“I’m just borrowing.” His wet tongue licks a quick trail upward before his lips wrap around my flesh again, causing a shaky exhale to leave my mouth.
The second thing on the agenda is to get laid, my God.
I shouldn’t feel this needy for a guy’s touch because just the gentle push of Reeve’s body against my own is turning me on.
“What are you doing?” I half-ass, so I can prepare myself. If he says he wants to take me somewhere I’m not going to say no. I’m almost stupid enough to get wrapped in his sweet words and attention.
However, at the end of the day, we’re still not on the same side, but it doesn’t mean I can’t have ten minutes of him and his dirty thoughts.
“Making sure we don’t have to go through this again.” His mouth opens wider, taking more of my neck and sucking on the already sensitive flesh there. I honestly don’t even care if he leaves a mark because I can cover it up pretty well. “You gonna text me?”
“No.”
His teeth delicately sink into my skin as a weak warning that he doesn’t like my answer but isn’t totally surprised by it either.
He turns us both so that my back is now to the hallway we just came down and he chuckles so deep and fucking delicious in his throat. “Good. I wouldn’t want to miss any of the fun.”
My phone is shoved back into my small little satchel, and I stare up at hazels that look like galaxies of greens and browns.
“Why are you lookin’ at me like that?”
I feel a small blush creep up through my already heated skin, but I ignore it. He can call me out, I don’t care. “You don’t like me looking at you, Reevie?”
“I wouldn’t say that,” he counters, propping his elbow on the wall next to us. “I’d just prefer for you to look at me like that when you’re not double-guessing yourself.”
“About?”
“Me.”
My eyes clench on their own and I’m allowed a few seconds of chaos in my head before I open them and still find Reeve standing there.
“Too bad you’re not totally on my side, because maybe it wouldn’t be so hard to convince you to go somewhere. So I can get on my knees and disappear between your pretty thighs and show you how interested I am in learning more about you.”
Fuck. Me. Damn.
I clench my legs together, my pussy beginning to throb at the thought of his shady blonde hair threaded through my fingers as his mouth explores.
“Might have to take a raincheck on that, though, baby,” he whispers, and before I can form a retort or question on why, a hard body presses possessively into my spine, followed by the familiar smell of cedar and melon.
“Because it’s finally my time to have some fun with the major pain in my ass from South Shore,” Torin whispers into my ear, dispatching a violent shiver to sprint up my spine.
And that’s when I know, I really fucked up by coming here.
THIRTY-TWO
bay
Torin wraps his palm around my mouth as if he’s about to kidnap my ass in his stepdad’s house, and I roll my eyes at the dramatics.
When we’re inside a dark library that looks like it came out of a medieval castle, with dark bookcases, leather furniture, and tall windows to let in the natural light from outside, Torin spins me around into a shelf of books and slams my spine mercilessly into it.
Then he’s in my face the next.
“Ever hear of the book The Documents in the Case,” Torin asks me, and I groan, noticing Reeve plop down in one of his leather chairs out of the corner of my eye.
“Don’t read anything but car manuals,” I reply, holding his stare and composure against being caged between him and the endless books on his shelf. “Or shit for school.”
“It’s based on a 1922 murder case about a man named Percy Thompson. He was allegedly murdered by his wife, Edith, and her lover, Freddy, to which the story went nationwide.”
“Not a big history buff, Pretty Boy. Say what you need to say and—”
“It was when female sexuality was considered dangerous and practically evil by weak-minded men who couldn’t keep their filthy hands to themselves.” He leans forward, a few inches from my mouth, and if I didn’t know any better, I’d say he’d kiss me. “And my filthy hands aren’t afraid to tear into a well-known prospect of South Shore if she doesn’t keep her fat ass out of my sight like I’ve been tellin’ her to do for what feels like a fucking century at this point.”
I glimpse over my shoulder to look at said body part when his hand seizes my throat and drives the back of my head into a bunch of dusty old hardbacks.
“What’s the master plan, Wildfire? You gonna to try to gain Emilio’s love so he starts handing you the keys to the kingdom?”
“That’s going to be a hell no for me.”
“And why is that so hard to believe?”
I give a detached shrug. “That sounds more of a personal problem.”
He pulls my upper half forward, just to ram it back into the poor shelves and abandoned books behind me.
“I don’t have a plan,” I choke out because he’s squeezing a little too hard but leaving enough room for me to breathe if I focus on it only.
Except it’s hard when I have a man sandwiching me to a piece of furniture while interrogating my ulterior motive.
“You don’t have a plan,” Torin repeats flatly and with no emotion attached to it. Reaching behind him, he lifts his shirt and grabs his gun that is tucked underneath. What I didn’t expect was the silencer screwed on the end of it. “You know he’s gay as fuck, right?”
“Emilio?”
“Torin,” Reeve warns, more like sing-songs, as if he needs to lighten the mood.
Pretty Boy promptly ignores his buddy and removes the safety of the weapon. “He doesn’t like women. Ramsey doesn’t fuck women. He tortures them, lets their blood drip from their bodies as he laughs, and watches them die out slowly. He doesn’t screw pretty little girls from the block, and he sure as hell doesn’t look at them from the other side of his dick.”
“I’m sorry, when did we flip to Ramsey? I thought we were talkin’ about Dad.”
Yeah, he doesn’t like the reference.
Because the pads of Torin’s fingers are going to leave an imprint with how hard he’s squeezing my windpipe now.
“He doesn’t seem gay,” I mutter on, keeping my body still as Torin brings his weapon to my temple.
“He is.”
“Are you…a bunch of homophobes or something?” The click of the hammer on Torin’s gun gets Reeve out of his chair and striding through the room.
Thankfully, in my direction.
“Bay Bay,” he composes collectively, reaching my side and sliding himself between me and the bookshelf. It only gets me closer to Torin but he’s not gonna pull the trigger with me so close to his buddy…I think. Plus, if he wants answers to wherever he’s going with this, he’s gonna need me alive. “You know guns kill, right?”
I mindlessly seek comfort in Reeve, pressing my ass to his front, looking for protection from the big bad wolf in front of me when I say, “I don’t know why I have to be up to anything.”
“Because no one likes Ramsey, McQueen,” Reeve whispers in my ear as Torin eases up on my throat. “And you don’t appear like a gold digger, so spill.” His large hands rest on both my hips as he gently runs his thumbs back and forth, pulling me closer to feel the bulge of his cock prominently pressing into my butt. “Give him what he wants so you can go home and text me later.”
“What do you want me to say?” I argue. “That I’m out for your throne or something, because trust me, it’s not that.”
“Then what is it?” Torin snaps impatiently. Those perfectly shaped brows compressed together. “Because you made it very clear that you wanted nothing to do with Emilio. But Ramsey…he might be a fucking clown but he’s Emilio’s favorite. So have we moved on to him now?”
“I’m dating Levi Wallace,” I falsely claim. “Keep up, Pretty Boy.”
“I think your bullshitting.” Torin flicks his amber eyes to Reeve for the first time. “Go watch the door.”
Reeve doesn’t move. “You gonna chill?”
Baby Wildes glares at him, but Reeve doesn’t budge until he finally answers with, “She’ll walk out alive.”
Reeve then does what he says without question, abandoning me to the only crazy person in the room.
And this asshole wants me to text him—psh.
He doesn’t turn his back either, immediately closing the door behind him and trusting that I’ll be alive afterward for him to bother.
I mean, Torin would have to have the balls to kill Emilio’s only newly founded daughter.
“You said you were going to fuck me,” Torin undertones, slowly running the warm metal down the side of my face and releasing my neck altogether. “And I was gonna fall madly in love with you. You want to off Emilio, just like a bunch of other people do…but you’re too much of a pussy to pull the trigger? Because you sure as hell had no problem with me.”
“It’s called learning street smarts,” I quake when the tip of the barrel runs along my jaw. “You could’ve killed—”
“I want you to fuck me.” His gold-plated eyes sink into my soul, yanking the once-residing courage and self-preservation out of me. “Because I wanna know if you can make me turn on the only man who’s ever wanted to give me shit, or if I’m still gonna want to kill you afterward.”
“I’m not—” The click of a hammer resonates through the space between us, and I don’t have to guess what that is.
Fuck.
“You gonna chance that?”
Torin’s lips curl into a foreboding, smug smile. “I just might.”
The pads of his fingers curl the hem of my dress, heaving it over my prickled thighs as he looks vacantly at me, and that’s the scary part.
I’m either going to scoot out of here with barely my life intact or…I’m going to seduce Torin Wildes and do exactly what I said.
Without Emilio, there’s only Torin, Cairo, and Reeve.
Yeah, that’s three more than what I started with. But if they run the Forsaken Crew, I can get information to get the upper hand for Levi who’s clearly not going to like it.
In fact, he’s going to loathe it with a passion.
However, I’m in a very unique situation to get South Shore back into an economically stable setting. The people need this just as much as I do, if not more.
